Fashion house Gucci launched its latest limited-edition art book, Beaten & Blown By The Wind. Conceptualised by Creative Director Alessandro Michele, it is a collaboration with noted American photographer Bruce Gilden. Shot in Rome, it is a collection of street portraits and comprises imagery of the house’s Pre-Fall 2020 collection.
“Bruce is a beautiful person with a poetic gaze on humanity,” says Alessandro Michele. “We share the same passion for faces and an obsession with expressions, personalities and looks. I am a great collector of portraits because the human figure is central to me. Working with a photographer means seeing through someone else’s eyes and it was wonderful to see through Bruce’s eyes. I felt like I was looking at things under a microscope in a science laboratory.”
“I had never made a book in this way before, which I viewed as a photographic challenge, and the end result is a truly creative collaboration with Alessandro Michele,” says Bruce Gilden. “Having Rome as the backdrop was great, the city really inspires me – the beauty of the architecture and its age and watching how the Roman people move around their unique surroundings, as well as discovering the statues in the park high above Rome that mix with beautiful clouds, and the panorama of the city below… it all lent itself for some good pictures.”
The high contrast black and white images, printed on textured off-white paper, capture the city’s humanity, and feature Italian musician Achille Lauro, Italian actress and model Benedetta Barzini, and American fashion model and advocate Bethann Hardison, among others.
“The design and layout of the book fits my photographic style and the experience I had making the images perfectly,” says the photographer. “Rome and its people got to me in a good way; I would like to go back and shoot them more thoroughly. I could even imagine living there,” he adds.